The principles of New Urbanism.
By MATTHEW PETTY
DOWNTOWN SILOAM SPRINGS: It’s embraced New Urbanism. Photo by NOVO STUDIO
New Urbanism is a set of principles that can be used to make cities better for their people. New Urbanism produces higher tax revenues and increases equity when implemented diligently. Many Arkansas cities are doing it: Fayetteville, Pine Bluff, North Little Rock, Siloam Springs and Fort Smith. They are better off for it. When we realize what New Urbanism does and is for, we can find it all across the state, including in some unlikely places.
By way of example, there is my childhood home of Harrison. I remember when my mother took me to the holiday parades and craft fairs they were always on the square, and I wasn’t sure why. The parking lot at the high school or the mall was bigger. Then as I started to grow up, I wondered why the stores were closing. It was almost 20 years after I noticed the storefronts closing in the ’90s before Harrison got a mayor who figured out how to fix that problem. The mayor used New Urbanism to do it.
What Harrison city leadership did was take back control of the square from the state, which had designated a state highway route through the town square. The Arkansas Department of Transportation isn’t chartered to keep downtown stores in business. Its job is to change the dynamics of existing infrastructure so that traffic can flow better (faster) when there is more of it. And so it did.
Decisions have consequences and the downtown dynamics were deliberately changed to privilege through traffic. Of course, businesses suffered. Every new change and restriping made the street more into a highway and less of a local street. Those decisions made crossing the street feel dangerous and exposed.
When city leadership took back jurisdiction they redesigned the street to favor storefronts more or less like it had been when it was built the first time. And it worked. Businesses that were failing are instead still there today, years later. City leadership rebuilt the street in a certain way that restored the town square to the way it was supposed to have been working the whole time. People in the square could relax again, so they came back.
This brief history lesson is about what New Urbanism actually is: solutions for urban challenges as they are encountered. Did you know that New Urbanists authored the framework for Hope VI, the massive federal affordable housing program? And New Urbanists worked with the Institute of Transportation Engineers to write the book on pedestrianizing state highways. They also created an organization with dozens of city officials to write the first technical book for urban street design. It goes on: New Urbanists invented a whole new way of doing zoning codes, called form-based codes, which have already been implemented in Fort Smith, North Little Rock, Pine Bluff and several Northwest Arkansas cities.
New Urbanists work across so many different projects because that is what it takes — there are a lot of contemporary challenges. Some of those challenges seem astronomical, like the way every city in this state (and this country) is still segregated by race and income. Perhaps changing the systems that plan and govern our physical environment can help to reduce some of the negative outcomes associated with racial and economic segregation.
There are some challenges that just can’t be solved without also changing the way our cities are arranged and constructed. Waterways are polluted by urban runoff. Tax revenues don’t pay infrastructure maintenance and that makes our cities indebted. Climate change and the heat island effect have teamed up to work against us. The list goes on and on.
But there is a way out. First, it is clear all of these challenges are related to one another. We can see when one thing happens, such as a global pandemic, other things are affected and can even get much worse. It all exists together in a dynamic system, and some things are more closely linked and some are more loosely linked. With respect to New Urbanism, the point is that this system operates on a physical platform: the city itself. New Urbanists believe that if we can make the right changes to the physical environment, those challenges can be partially mitigated and some can even be solved.
The central theory of new urbanists is that cities can be — and should be — better for their citizens. This notion is described in detail in the Congress for the New Urbanism’s “Charter for the New Urbanism,” a collection of principles guiding the practice.
Principle 13 is one of my favorites. It says that if a neighborhood has housing types and price levels mixed together on the blocks and streets, neighborhood residents end up having both more acquaintances and more true friends. Consider the impact of this in its entirety. It’s not just about emotional well-being; what’s the impact on your bottom line for having more people in your network that you can rely on?
Speaking of the bottom line, Principle 11 suggests there is a kind of commercial activity that should happen within neighborhoods. Not just nearby or at the edge, this suggestion is that neighborhoods are legitimately better for residents if a certain small scale of commercial activity is available right there. From the real estate industry’s obsession with location to the relative convenience of a last-minute grocery run, humans are obsessed with convenience. Yet in the supermajority of Arkansas neighborhoods, commercial activity of any kind is illegal.
Principle 12 is about freedom. Bear with me through an example: We don’t let our youth drive. Have you ever heard a teenager complain about not being able to see his or her friends? And many elderly can’t drive, too. Have you ever listened to a grandmother make the same complaint? Neither one of these lamentable situations happens as frequently in neighborhoods built in accordance with Principle 12. The principle simply says interconnected transportation networks, when they are designed for safe and comfortable walking and biking, help more people do more things.
These three principles seem simple and obvious when said out loud. On its face the very first principle of the charter seems just as clear, but the implications are profound. Principle 1 is that cities and towns are the basic building blocks of the contemporary world. We are the centers for commerce, and we are so much more. Practically everyone spends time in our cities, not just earning a living, but also making memories, building lives and struggling to overcome personal and systemic obstacles.
The implication of Principle 1 is that local leaders have an authority and obligation to be zealous advocates for their citizenry, and the state and federal governments have an obligation to support our work. When we change the city, we change the game for everybody. It’s critical that we make the right changes and that we don’t pass by opportunities that will make a difference for decades or longer.
Cities and their leaders can learn how to do that using New Urbanism. Don’t trust anyone who says New Urbanism is just about new subdivisions or new zoning codes. It’s a broad movement, and Arkansas cities are a part of it. Even though we already love our cities and towns, we can always do better. We can and should do more using the principles in the Charter. Our people deserve it.
Matthew is a three-term Fayetteville councilmember. In his business, he practices city planning and mixed-use development and teaches neighborhood development nationwide for the Incremental Development Alliance.